


Telling Dreams from One Another

by Kalcifer



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known By a Sentient God Robot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 12:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21392386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalcifer/pseuds/Kalcifer
Summary: Mako shows up on Kobus' doorstep holding a Divine, and doesn't even have the decency to bring fried chicken.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Telling Dreams from One Another

**Author's Note:**

> I spend a lot of time thinking about the Divine from the finale and its various forms, and even more time thinking about Kobus, so it was perhaps inevitable that I would combine them. Faith isn't that dissimilar to Loyalty, after all.

Kobus stared at the man on their doorstep. Somehow, he’d made it to the gates of the Hands of Grace compound, despite being a prominent member of the organization that had cut Grace’s arm off and started her slide into erratic violence. The staring did not configure the situation into something that made more sense.

“Hey,” Mako Trig said. He grinned in a way that would have been disarming if he wasn’t carrying a Divine under his arm, which was its own level of baffling and concerning. “Can I come in? It’s really dusty out here.”

“I… sure?” Kobus stepped aside to let him past, mind whirring. They lowered their voice. “Are you here to…” They gestured vaguely in Grace’s direction. They didn’t know how far her range extended, these days.

“Huh?” Mako cocked his head in confusion, but just as Kobus was starting to get concerned, he nodded. “Oh, right. Gimme a sec.”

His eyes glazed over. His grip slackened, and Kobus was torn between racing forward to catch the Divine before it fell and stepping back to make sure they wouldn’t come into contact with it. Before they could commit to either course of action, Mako shook himself back into awareness. “All right, Grace can’t hear us anymore. What’s up?”

“Well, I was going to ask if you were here to hack her, but I guess that answers that question.” Kobus felt almost giddy. They were going to fix Grace. Things were finally going to get better.

Mako made a wobbly motion with his hand. “I mean, I can? I don’t know if there’s much of a point, though. Old Mako said he didn’t find anything wrong with her when he checked.”

A distant part of Kobus noted that this was one of the clones. They almost felt like they should apologize for their last encounter, despite the fact that they’d ended up as the one being chased.

It didn’t really matter, though, because most of them was focused on what this Mako had said. “You have to look again,” they said. “Maybe he just didn’t know what to look for. I can help you. It’s obvious that she needs to be fixed.”

“Sure,” Mako said easily, as if billions of lives weren’t riding on this. “But first, I need you to do something for me.”

Kobus wanted to protest, but they knew they were at a disadvantage here. “Okay, fine,” they said impatiently.

Mako held out the orb he’d been carrying as if it were a carnival prize. “Can you tell what’s up with this thing?”

Kobus regarded him steadily. “It’s a Divine.”

Mako rolled his eyes. “Yeah, no shit. But it’s not like any of the Divines we’ve encountered, and we need to know if we can trust it.” He thrust the orb at them.

Kobus carefully did not recoil. “How would I know?”

“Look, the closest thing we have to Candidates we trust are you and Addax, and no offence to Addax, but the last time he was in a Divine he turned Peace into Order. And from what I’ve heard, Order was not a nice guy.” Mako shrugged, so flippant Kobus briefly wanted to punch him. “You’re basically the expert here.”

Kobus gave themself a moment to hate the situation, hate that they couldn’t escape the shadow of Loyalty no matter what they did, hate every single Mako for the easy way this one spoke about the forces that dictated so many people’s lives. Then they took a deep breath and shoved all that aside. “Okay,” they said, and held out their hands.

They could feel the Divine reach for them, a new presence moving along achingly familiar pathways. It was every moment they’d been confident in their place in the world. It was the surety in their bones that they were doing the right thing, that they were building a better future. It was the conviction that things would work out. All they had to do was trust –

Kobus practically flung the orb away from themself. They couldn’t do this, not again, not when they were finally starting to reclaim themself. They couldn’t let it take them over again.

Mako looked at the orb, rolling gently down the hallway. “That bad, huh?” He couldn’t quite hide his concern.

Kobus almost laughed in his face. He could brush off the lives of everyone in the sector, but one fragile ex-Candidate was enough to shake him? He clearly didn’t understand the first thing about how the Diaspora functioned.

They’d already let themself falter from emotion once, though. With distance, it was obvious that this Divine wasn’t really Loyalty. Its conviction had been focused inward.

“I need to be sure,” they said, leaning down to pick up the orb again. This time, they didn’t flinch as Faith flooded into them. They welcomed it even as it probed at them, asking if this new state of its was better, if it should turn its back on zealousness and those it represented.

“It’s okay,” Kobus soothed, sending the thoughts as if they were directives. “We’re – we’re allies, we have the same goals. There’s no need to hate anyone here.”

Faith settled down, mollified. Kobus took the opportunity to consider it for as long as they could bear. When they felt too exposed and scraped raw to gather any more information, they returned the orb to Mako, handing it off deliberately. They imagined they could feel the Divine reconfiguring itself back into Zeal as it left their mind.

“So…” Mako said, his tone too purposefully laidback to just be asking about the Divine.

Kobus ignored the implications. They were very good at straightforward earnestness. “It’s not like any of the Divines I’ve ever met,” they said. “I think it’s young, like actually young, not just built to act like it. So without the baggage of thousands of years of people trying to define it, it’s kind of improvising? I don’t know how, but I think it decides what it should be based on who’s guiding it.”

“Huh,” Mako said. “Neat. So is it cool, do you think?”

“As much as a Divine can be,” Kobus said. “There’s still a chance it will malfunction, I guess, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t have enough memories to have goals outside its Candidate’s.”

“You’re talking to the best Stratus in the galaxy, who also lives with seven less-good versions of himself, which still makes them better than any goodie-two-shoes September graduate. I think we can handle a malfunctioning Divine.” Mako tossed the orb in the air, apparently unaware of how thoroughly he was undermining his own point.

“That’s good,” Kobus said, “because it’s time to put that to the test. Are you ready to hack Grace?”

Mako sucked in air through his teeth. “I mean, I should probably get back to HQ, but I guess I can take a quick look.”

“No. I did what you wanted, you don’t get to back out now.” Kobus knew how this worked. People assumed they were too young or naïve for agreements made with them to matter. It could be useful, when people let their guard down, but mostly it was just frustrating.

Mako looked even more uncomfortable, but he nodded. “Fine. Just don’t blame me if you don’t like what we find out.”

“I’m not a child,” Kobus snapped. It wasn’t like Mako had any room to accuse people of being childish anyway.

Mako held up his hands in mock surrender. “Right. Got it. Now lead the way.”

Kobus forced themself to take a deep breath. It wasn’t Mako’s fault they were feeling so vulnerable. Or it was, but the results would be worth it if they could just fix Grace.

“This way,” they said, leading Mako into the maintenance tunnels.

Everything would be fine. They were so close to achieving their goal, to saving so many people who’d been suffering under Grace’s tyranny. All they needed now was to have faith.


End file.
